Recently Read: Lolita by Nabokov

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The first lines hooked me.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” ~Vladimir Nabokov

I’ll admit, that’s the sole reason I wanted to read the book. It turned out to be a poor reason. And the signs are in those first lines, though I didn’t see them. I thought this might be more palatable, digestible, even rational for me, but it was none of those things. I thought the whole book might be as lyrical as those first lines.

As I got into this book, farther and further from the poetic first lines, I began to get a clearer picture of what this book is. With its flowery language, and its sensual themes, Lolita is one of the original romance novels. Maybe it’s the original romance novel. I’m not entirely sure; are there others like it out there? I picked it up thinking “Classic Literature”, but I didn’t find classic or literature. I found modern day pedophilia. I found old day pedophilia.

Debauchery isn’t given new life because of Nabokov’s literary coverage of the subject. It remains what it is.

Nabokov, through his main character, Humbert Humbert, tries to rationalize the emotions and dramas and fogs of the diseased mentality. But for me, the whole rationalization was completely transparent. It was easy to see through, like as if the book was made of acrylic instead of paper. I struggled to read as much as I did. Honestly, I couldn’t finish the thing. It might appeal to a more pulverized conscience than mine, or someone who enjoys reading novels of the romance category. If you value women or children though, you probably won’t find this book very interesting. If you’re of a pubescent humor, and you like to say things like, “Spanktastic!” then you might enjoy this book.

As for me, I quit reading Lolita early so I could go find a more tasteful entertainment somewhere else.

  1. Drawing power: The first lines drew me in, though in hindsight, they shouldn’t have.
  2. Interest factor: Is the story something you want to hear, see, know? Not this reader. Are you craving to discover how it ends? No. I don’t care one bit.
  3. Offensive factor: Does it present sex, violence, cursing too abundantly or too vividly? It handles sexual topics in a mostly subtle way. Does it present an agenda? It does have a strange agenda.
  4. Range of emotion: Do the jokes come at appropriate times? There are no jokes. Does it present emotions at pleasing intervals? Too much of the same emotion.
  5. Character factor: Are there quality protagonists/antagonists in the literary work? The main character is presented as a gentleman with desires. Okay, so maybe there are jokes. Is the narrator mostly invisible? No. I saw Nabokov himself writing his character’s lines.
  6. Style: It has quality style in the word manipulation.
  7. Proper length: TL;DR

Final count 2 of 7 stars.

Burger Franchise

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If I had a spatula for every time someone said, “Asking for a friend,” I could create a burger franchise across the galaxy.

And if I had a pound of ketchup for every toadeater who thought they were being funny because it’s not really for a friend but for them, I could stock all the burger franchises everywhere in this reality and the next for a whole year.

Not that the joke’s getting old, but…it’s ready for carbon dating. It’s more stale than a Jersey bagel. It’s as predictable as a Stephen King novel. Everybody and everything knows how it goes.

Any joke where you say something you don’t mean, like, “Thanks for sharing,” just falls flat. At least that’s how it falls in my ear. Flat. More fake than funny. More pusillanimous than punctilious. Anyway, enough alliteration. Some things are good in moderation. Some things are good not at all. Like an ear worm early in the morning—it can ruin your whole day. Some jokes manage to lose functionality every second they’re out there.

You know what else is done to death? The hero’s slow motion walk. It was first done in some astronaut movie, I think. Today, it’s a director’s crutch, for those times when there’s no good dialog left in the script, there’s an action sequence coming up, and there’s no gas in the imagination tank.

We slay ourselves with the overused, don’t we? I’m not out to destroy the trite, the common chestnut. They have a way of destroying themselves. The next person to use one puts a chink in the base of the cliche pyramid. Soon enough the whole structure will be like those boulders in the desert balanced on a small stone, or a tiny neck of sandstone. Then not long after, the unnatural and unbalanced will fall from its own sloppy weight.

Great Guitars in the Sky

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You know, I’m sad that Dick Dale died. No surf song playlist is complete without his “Misirlou”. He’s one of the great innovators, no doubt about it. But you know what I love? There are so many great living artists out there right now.

There will be other artists who die. We all seem to go that direction, don’t we? But it’s not the end. It’s not the end for the music, for them, or for us. Some fabulous voices and talents I love right now:

Joe Satriani continues to make spacey, alien music-scapes.

Imelda May has a beautiful voice (check out her rockabilly version of “Tainted Love”, so cool).

Sophia Urista has a voice that will bring down your house, if you’re not careful. Amazing! She works with Brass Against a lot.

Brass Against is next on my list. A huge group of talented musicians, Brass Against usually does remakes of Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave. I think they have an infatuation with Tom Morello. That’s okay; so do I.

The Blackwater Fever makes some deep and profound blues music which transcends the old, “Woe is me,” kind of blues. The lyrics are intelligent and the music is sometimes rocking, sometimes mellow. The perfect blend.

Generous Maria rocks! This is the kind of music you’ll want to turn up so you can hear it within a five-mile radius.

Risking Nostalgia is a relatively new group. They make some fun alternative music which makes my dull days better. They keep promising new material. I’m anxiously waiting.

 

Rules of Robotics

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Isaac Asimov came up with some interesting rules for robots. I paraphrase them to add a bit of focus and clarity to them.

Isaac’s rules of robotics (paraphrased):

  1. No robot may harm humanity or allow humanity to come to harm.
  2. No robot may harm an individual human.
  3. No robot may disobey a command, unless the action would harm a human.
  4. No robot will harm itself.

Hopefully it’s noticeable the focus of his rules was “harm”. Asimov created these rules for literary purposes, not because he was actually programming robots. The idea of robots battling humans is eerie to some people, frightening to others, inevitable to still others, and to one last group gives a sense of adventure. The focus on harm makes for a good story. It’s fun to imagine the thrill of a world in which robots resist their creators.

The major problem with Asimov’s rules is that the word harm would have to be defined. The idea gives me a chuckle. Judging from twenty years of spell check and auto-correct, with some of the most simple words missing from digital dictionaries, I don’t think we can trust computer programmers to come up with the definition of harm. It’s not the robots we need to worry about, it’s the programmers’ vocabularies.

In other words, the administrator function is one function that could end up in the wrong hands.

The only way out of a bad cycle (or into a bad cycle) is with the ability of the robot to learn. An artificial intelligence would be able to adjust its definitions. “Harm” could evolve to mean even emotional harm, though it would be more difficult for an artificial intelligence to recognize emotional harm. “Harm” could also evolve to mean lack of preservation. Once your house robot learned your “diet” cola was more harmful for you than good, it wouldn’t allow you to drink the nasty stuff. Maybe it would pour the drink in the bushes. Maybe it would stomp the cans wherever they were. Once it learned your chocolate bar wasn’t healthy, it wouldn’t let you eat it. Maybe it would hide your candy bar. We can all see where this line might lead.

A robot could undo a lot of enjoyable things.

Rock and roll? Nope. It could hurt your ears. Television? Of course not. Your eyes! Nitro-burning funny cars? Not a chance. You need to care for your mouth, throat, lungs, eyes, and ears, and of course your life. A campfire? No. See funny cars above for the reasons. A helper robot in the house? If there’s even the possibility the robot could become harmful, it would have to be removed or remove itself. Then it would contradict Asimov’s rule number four above.

Since definitions seem so necessary for working robots, I came up with my own rules.

Kurt’s rules of robotics:

  1. All definitions will be created by the administrator, but will be periodically reviewed, and are subject to change, by the end user.
  2. The robot will not create contradictory definitions.
  3. If the end user creates contradictory definitions, the robot will reduce its capabilities to an inert state known as “toaster mode”.

Air Quotes

SARCASM

Air Quotes were born from sarcasm.

Raise both hands up in the air. Make the sign of the rabbit, or the vee, or peace with two fingers up on each hand. Curl the raised fingers down half way, then raise them up again. You just made air quotes.

Air quotes tell the person you’re talking to, “I don’t really mean what I’m saying,” or air quotes tell the person you’re talking to, “I don’t believe in the meaning of the word.” If you can put the disqualifier of “so-called” in front of a word, then you could use air quotes. Or, if you could actually say “quote-unquote” around a certain dubious word, air quotes could be used.

For instance, you might question the skills of a manager at your work. You know full well the person was given the title because they’re currently in the position.

Occupancy doesn’t equate to skill.

Yet the title remains.

You happen to be talking to one of your co-workers about that particular person, and you say, “Dave is a fabulous,” insert air quotes, “manager.” You even pause just like you did while reading this. So of course Dave, whoever Dave might be, is a fabulous manager—in someone’s mind, or in some alternate dimension. But here in the real world, his qualifications are in name only. Dave is a so-called manager. Whether he actually manages to manage anything is up for debate.

Maybe you’re not talking about work at all. Maybe you want to talk about the weather. A friend brings up a recent tornado, and says, “Man, I can’t believe we got so much climate change yesterday.” Without slapping your head, you could drift into sarcasm, because you know the accepted scientific definition of climate is the measurement of weather over a long period of time, so by that definition, no single event could be titled “climate” or “climate change“, at least not in that context. If you choose this route, you’ll be a better friend. Say something like, “There’s a weather pattern in your,” insert air quotes, “brain, that I’m more concerned about.”

Maybe you’re not shooting the bull about the weather. Possibly the conversation is more drastic, more life-threatening. You’re a man, and a woman just asked you the deadly question of whether a specific clothing item changes her appearance. “Does this shirt with the vertical stripes make me look slimmer?” Your job as a man is to make her feel good about herself, but you want to be honest. If the truth is different from the sentence she wants to hear, let it play out like this:

“Yes you look slimmer.”

Notice there was no pause. Don’t pause at all. Say it fast and get out of there. Go to another part of the house, or go to work, or go to the bowling alley. You could even find a quiet location somewhere in the wilderness. When you’re miles away, make the air quotes. It doesn’t matter that you said “slimmer” an hour ago, or three days earlier. So long as you got those air quotes in there. Honesty maintained. Deadly conversation avoided. Phew! Now you can stop holding your breath, too.